


Who Needs Pictures?

by orphan_account



Series: Post-Reichenbach [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Pining, Pining Sherlock, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-12 21:13:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1200896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Who needs pictures,” Sherlock whispered, already in his Mind Palace, fingering through his mental photo collection of every moment he had ever spent with John, remembering far too much, “with a memory like mine?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Needs Pictures?

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: This work is entirely fictional. Credit of original forms of characters to the creators of BBC Sherlock. No Copyright infringement intended. The following is not in any way an official representation of the actual characters/creators/actors and actresses portraying any characters or people who happen to share a name with any potential original characters

There are precious few things that have the ability of holding the complete attention of Sherlock Holmes. Such things included interesting cases, preferably homicide, but the important thing was that they were interesting, weird, or different. Experiments, usually dangerous ones. Guns on occasion. Drugs, though not for a while. Currently the roll of film that appeared smaller than it actually was in the centre of his palm.

It had not been his idea to take pictures on the occasional vacation or cases that took John and himself away from London, in fact, from every picture, there was sure to be context in which he was complaining of the sheer ordinarity and how dull it was to take pictures of oneself for sake of a change of background.

And yet, despite his complaints, here the pictures were. And in them, under threat of a broken microscope no doubt, one would see a smiling Sherlock. These were not, in Sherlock’s opinion, the pictures to see. The ones to see were the ones starring John, John’s smiling blue eyes, John’s varying shade of skin, John’s hair windswept and messy, John wearing less clothing than strictly necessary in their day-to-day lives to compensate for heat.

Standing in the shadows of what used to be John’s room, Sherlock couldn’t help but wonder what exactly was on the roll, which cases. If there had been a moment in which John’s hands had slipped and he had taken a picture, maybe of himself, without meaning to, and blurring the edges. If he had ever, as Lestrade had, taken a picture of him when he was unaware.

He lifted the roll to eye level, looking through the undeveloped film to see the faint pictures, wondering the pros and cons of going to a store to develop them into photos he could hold independently, inspect, use as bargaining chips for John’s temporary return. That’s what friends did, didn’t they? Look through old photos, remind each other of the past?

But no, that wouldn’t do. John had gone, and the film had sat in his top dresser drawer since that night.

He took the roll, but instead of putting it back into the drawer of taking them or to be developed, he put it in the cardboard box that sat on the highest shelf of his bedroom closet. The box was filled with faded memories of the past, objects to remind him of the time John and Sherlock were John and Sherlock, as opposed to now, when there was John and Mary, and Sherlock, separate from them and the rest of the world as well. It had been that way since the night John had officially left 221B. In it were newspaper clippings, half-finished handwritten writeups of cases, even grocery lists in John’s hurried scrawl, and the deerstalker,now joined by the roll of film.

“Who needs pictures,” Sherlock whispered, already in his Mind Palace, fingering through his mental photo collection of every moment he had ever spent with John, remembering far too much, “with a memory like mine?”


End file.
